European Union Regulations

The European Union (EU) has been a leader in the development of both guidance and regulations to ensure food safety throughout the member states. Because of the free movement of food commodities among the countries that belong to the European Union, there is a great need to assure high quality monitoring of both imported food and member state products. The procedures and methods required need to be practical, state-of-the art, and harmonised. The European Commission has developed a network of laboratories and scientific studies to meet this goal. This chapter describes the current Regulations, Directives and Decisions of the European Commission that protect the food supply throughout Europe. Because imported food needs to comply with the EU requirements, and the need to have common compliance throughout the member states, the developed system could be a worldwide template for monitoring the food supply. In addition, the integral role of chromatography hyphenated to mass spectrometry is described.